Research on the Impact of Social Responsibility of Chinese Small and Medium-sized Enterprises on Financial Performance
From the mediating effect of management innovation and productivity
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) refers to that enterprises...
Research on the Impact of Social Responsibility of Chinese Small and Medium-sized Enterprises on Financial Performance
From the mediating effect of management innovation and productivity
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) refers to that enterprises should also assume responsibilities to consumers, communities and the environment while creating profits and assuming legal responsibilities to shareholders and employees. CSR requires enterprises not only take the traditional concept of making profits as the goal of development. And CSR emphasizes the value of people in the production process, and the contribution to the environment, consumers, and society. To realize the sustainable development of enterprises, CSR as a business strategy has received extensive attention from enterprises and academia against the background of rapid changes in the corporate environment. The number of papers related to CSR in China reached 1826 from 1998 to 2018 (Guo Yi & Ye Fang Yuan, 2019). Yang (2015) and other scholars studied the CSR-financial performance relationship; Song and Sheng (2012) studied the effect of CSR on financial performance. Tao Wenjie and Jin (2012) studied the effect of media’s performance of CSR on corporate financial performance. Ma, Qian and Ji (2019) studied the environmental information disclosure-financial performance of manufacturing enterprises relationship. Although Xuexue has done a lot of research, from the perspective of corporate strategy, social responsibility (SR) is still a hot topic.
This dissertation aims to explore the mediating variable between CSR and financial performance, which is a necessary strategy that can connect enterprises. And this dissertation tries to explain the inconsistent CSR-financial performance relationship in the prior research. This dissertation proposes solutions for the following research problems: (1) Study the effect of CSR and financial performance that consist of economic, social and environmental responsibilities, and verify the sustainable development factors that affect corporate financial results. (2) This dissertation focuses on the mediating effect of corporate management innovation and productivity on CSR and financial performance. In this dissertation, a total of 330 questionnaires were distributed to Chinese small and medium-sized enterprises, and a total of 320 questionnaires were collected. Part of the questionnaires that were filled incompletely or had obvious regularities in the filling process were deleted, and a total of 315 valid questionnaires were obtained through screening.
Through data analysis, the main conclusions are as follows: CSR makes a positive effect on financial performance, specifically, economic responsibility makes a positive effect on financial performance; CSR makes a positive effect on financial performance; environmental responsibility makes a positive effect on financial performance Performance makes a positive effect. SR makes a positive effect on management innovation. And economic responsibility can make a positive effect on management innovation while SR makes a positive effect on management innovation. And environmental responsibility makes a positive effect on management innovation; SR makes a positive effect on productivity. In other words, economic responsibility makes a positive effect on productivity; SR makes a positive effect on productivity; environmental responsibility makes a positive effect on productivity. Moreover, management innovation makes a positive effect on financial performance; productivity makes a positive effect on financial performance. Finally, it verifies the mediating role of management innovation on corporate economic responsibility to financial performance and the mediating role of productivity on corporate economic responsibility to financial performance; the mediating role of productivity on corporate environmental responsibility to financial performance. The empirical findings of this dissertation provides reference for Chinese SMEs to formulate sustainable development SR strategies, establish new business models, and achieve sustainable development.